I absolutely loved the layout and format of this course. I liked this commons area, and the layout of the units, and how the assignments were listed. I found it to be a lot more organized, than other online courses I have previously taken. I really hope that other classes I take in the future are set up to be more like this. Thank you so much for everything!

I seriously have learned SO much from this course. I learned about extremely significant times in history and just overall so many important times in history. I really liked posting in the commons like this. I wish all of the online classes that I took had this as the place we posted for our discussion boards. It’s so easy to read everyone’s thoughts, and is just overall a way better idea.

I went a different way with this project than was explained in the postings, I’m sorry for that. I hope I still did an acceptable job at answering everything I needed too, and putting together a well written paper.

The book that I decided to read for this project is called ‘Founding Finance’ it was written by William Hogeland and reviewed by Stephen Bollom. This book looks at the events and influences in Founding Era America, which would be around the 18th century and how they are perceived in the US today with respect to current and some would say, deepening financial and democratic crises in that country.
Founding Finance’s main point is basically that modern day American all across the political spectrum. Aka from the Tea Party to Occupy have appropriated the history of the Founding era for their own purposes, while missing essential components that have been written out of the many histories written about during that time. It was a debate around paper money, money creation powers and precious – The debt from the war where we fought the English for many years – The huge amount of land speculations as new territories opened up – the creation of National Debt – The manipulation of the mob for purposes of political maneuvering, etc.
If you have an interest in the current state of the USA, as the world’s only superpower and home of the global currency or wondered ‘what happened to the American experiment’? Or even believe that to understand the present we need to understand the past, then I would most definitely recommend this book. It is a fascinating case study in how history gets ‘forgotten’, distorted, edited and re-interpreted, as so often happens in matters related to money.
I found this book to be quite fascinating and eye opening. I learned a lot about the dramatic clashes of finance and the economics that basically marked the founding of America. There was quite a lot of violent conflicts over economics, class and finance that played directly into forming the nation and ratifying the constitution. William Hogeland really opened my eyes up to seeing things in a different perspective and really realizing how things can get distorted throughout history.
The article that I decided to read for this project is called ‘Financial Lessons of America’s Founding fathers.’ This articles relates quite a bit to ‘Founding Finances’ because it’s actually talking about the influences that men William Hogeland had on our world, and even the way we handle speculation, debt, foreclosures, protects and crackdowns made our nation what it is today. It was such an interesting article, I recommend that anyone who read my paper thus far should read the article that I posted. It’s quite insightful and such a good read.

I also am going to add a video about the founding fathers influence on our world that I found to be very helpful in answering all of my questions on how things came to be, and really how much of an influence they really had on us.

I think increasing income would be amazing! I would love to make more money, and I’m sure a bunch of other people would too. The problem with that though is what will happen to the prices of things businesses are selling, and how many employees would they keep, if they raised the cost? Inflation and unemployment would certainly happen, so it’s always smart to weight the pros and cons.

I found a lot of the reading/videos to be quite interesting this week. They were super insightful about things I seriously had no idea about, or ever learned in an econ class before, so thank you for that! In America there was growing socialist and communist parties at one time. They actually were basically gone post McCarthy hearings. We have Bernie Sanders running for the presidential campaign now, and people look at him basically as nothing because he’s not in one of the top 2 parties that people typically vote for. Basically – it was just interesting to find out that we still struggle with certain thought processes about which party should win the presidential election, just as we did way back when.

I found the video series to be quite interesting! I thought it was really interesting to read about the men who built Cornelius Vanderbilt. I just think it was so fascinating to read about how he got his fortune, and how he became one heck of a business man. He built his empire by going from having just a steamboat business to a railroad tycoon! He just really knew what to do to make great money, and I’m very impressed by that.

I’d also like to mention that I learned that during both World Wars that America had a huge economic advantage in comparison to the other countries fighting. The United was almost able to completely overcome recession and that helped them with being able to fund WWI and WWII, while a lot of the other nations fighting were suffering with money, artillery, and having an acceptable amount of soldiers. Despite all of this, it’s still so terrible to read about all of the losses in each place. People lost their homes because of the wars, had a shortage in food, and soooo many people died. It certainly was a tragedy.

World War I was immensely different from previous wars, it’s definitely called “The Great War” for a heck of a reason. It was clearly the first war between every country in the world, which is quite frightening. It set the stage for other wars like this happening, and it obviously happened again because there was a World War II. World War I is the start of a real increase in nationalism and a large amount of soldiers willing to fight for their nation.

It was sad but interesting to read about The Great Depression. It occurred because of the 1929 Stock market crash and it really changed the economy forever. It really made us realize what we never want to occur again, even though it almost already has happened again. The Great Depression lasted from 1929-1939, during that time so many people lost their jobs, their homes, and really just couldn’t afford to do anything. The Great Depression affected the world. It changed our trading between other countries, which means we were supplying them with less money, while we were getting less goods.

John D. Rockefeller was absolutely brilliant. He made his oil business endeavor into one heck of an amazing business! He had the cheapest prices, the best strategies, and was quick to think of brilliant new ideas. He took basically all of his competitors business and made a ton of money while doing it. I think what he started for this country was brilliant, and he really set the tone for the oil business world. He is who you think of when you read or think about the oil business, and who other business man should read about and follow his actions, because of how well he made things work out for himself. He wasn’t the best man, but he was great at what he did.